SPACED OUT IN SPACE

MY INTENT HERE IS NOT TO MAKE LIGHT OF ALCOHOL ABUSE.

Except I can't but laugh over the huge furor rocking NASA and the media about a report suggesting some astronauts might have been drinking right before they lifted off.

HELLO!

REMEMBER THESE PEOPLE AND THIS ABORTED SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION?

Those seven astronauts at the top died when the space shuttle Columbia exploded during re-entry to Earth's atmosphere in 2003. They were obliterated. Disintegrated.

The same thing happened to Challenger in 1986, but that explosion happened shortly after lift-off.

And neither disaster happened because the astronauts were all looped.

It was technical issues.

And if I understand correctly, during lift-off the space shuttle crew doesn't really have a lot to do except strap themselves in and just survive the launch itself until they get into space.

People administer drugs to their pets just before they're shuffled off to the under-belly of a plane during a domestic flight, just to try to calm them and numb their terror.

OK, so maybe astronauts are something close to human, just like the rest of us. They have fears and problems, as evidenced by Lisa Nowak (below) who got caught in that astronaut love triangle.

And so how are they different from the top politicians, entertainers, athletes and others, who we already know have done far worse things and still get our undivided attention?


Alcohol abuse is virtually a worldwide problem. In the West, it's not just legal, the sale of it is controlled -- and massive revenues derived from its sale -- by governments.


At least in Canada it is.



The same governments that spend millions on advertising campaigns warning people not to abuse alcohol benefit from its sale by populations that consume it to numb the pain of their lives that governments help create.



And the media gets billions of dollars from the liquor companies that advertise with them. Sports stadiums are named after beer brands. Alcohol is deeply ensonced in our culture.



If I was an astronaut and I was about to get on a spacecraft like Discovery or Challenger or Columbia and put my life in the hands of scientists and technology, I wouldn't mind a few toots either.


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NASA astronauts tanked up on liquid courage before flights: report

We shouldn't make too much of this news, that astronauts flew into space while marginally blotto, because the report that it comes from queried members across all 40 years of NASA flight teams.

Nevertheless, as Reuters summarizes, it's kind of kooky:

NASA astronauts at least twice were permitted to fly in spacecraft despite signs they were drunk, according to a report released Friday by the U.S. space agency. NASA said it intends to investigate the allegations.

“Interviews with both flight surgeons and astronauts identified some episodes of heavy use of alcohol by astronauts in the immediate preflight period, which has led to flight safety concerns,” said the report from a panel assessing astronaut health matters.

“Alcohol is freely used in crew quarters. Two specific instances were described where astronauts had been so intoxicated prior to flight that flight surgeons and/or fellow astronauts raised concerns to local on-scene leadership regarding flight safety.

"However, the individuals were still permitted to fly. The medical certification of astronauts for flight duty is not structured to detect such episodes, nor is any medical surveillance program by itself likely to detect them or change the pattern of alcohol use"

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin ordered the report as well as another also released Friday after February’s arrest of then-astronaut Lisa Nowak. She is scheduled to be tried on Sept. 24 on charges of attempted kidnapping, battery and burglary.

Well, an alleged thousand-mile trip in a diaper to confront a 'love rival' seems pretty tame compared to flying $20-billion of U.S. tax dollars while over the legal limit. I wonder what it looks like to vomit in space?

Note the word "anal" in the word "analogies"

ANALOGIES ARE A COOL PART OF LANGUAGE.

And they can be fun too -- whether they work correctly or, even moreso, when they don't.

I'm a writer by trade.

Generally, I try to avoid making analogies if I can unless I absolutely know they work perfectly and no one could possibly not get the parallel or comparison I'm trying to make.

Analogies can work exceptionally well, or they can fail miserably. I tend to use them more in every day speech than I do in other ways.

For example:

"He's built like a brick shit house."
"Homo Escapeons has a face only a mother could love."

Anyway, all of this is a phoney lead-in to something I got from a fellow writer this week, and which I hope gives you a few giggles. These are actual analogies used in essays assigned to high school students.

But a final question before you read them...what is your favourite analogy of all time?

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighbourhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

My Daughter's DOH! Big Adventure

BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR...

BUT YOU MIGHT WANT TO LOOK AT A MAP.

My super-independent daughter, who's 19, borrows my car often.

This past weekend, she wanted to use it again to go either to Grand Beach on the eastern shores of Lake Winnipeg or to a nearby provincial campground/beach called Birds Hill Park.

Grand Beach was once voted one of the top 10 sand beaches in North America, if I'm not mistaken.

Lake Winnipeg is the 22nd largest natural freshwater Lake in the world. That's pix of the beach, above.

My daughter wanted, ahem, to just sunbathe with a friend and be a beach bum or bunny or whatever.

As per my previous post, this somewhat cramped my own plans to mingle with the masses in the summer heat.

However, I acquiesced.

She used the car Saturday night and kept it overnight so she could leave early for the beach on Sunday. She called me Sunday evening to return the car.

"So, where did you go," I asked.

"St. Malo," she said. "We got lost."

St. Malo is southeast of Winnipeg. Grand Beach and Birds Hill Park are northeast of Winnipeg.

St. Malo's an OK place, but it ain't the rockin' spot that Grand Beach is, or even Birds Hill Park. They took the right highway but they went south instead of north.

Doh!

It's a good thing Manitoba is known as the Land of 100,000 Lakes.

You can basically drive in any direction outside of the city and hit a nice lake with an acceptable beach.

It's the beauty of living in the Canadian Shield.

"It was OK," she said. "We had a good time."

And she even put some gas in the car, although the "Check Engine" light's been on ever since she had it.

I've spent $3,000 on this car just in the past month alone. But that's another tale.

I've shown her what to do if the car overheats. Now I guess I've got to show her how to read a map.

Sizzling in the Heat

IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE VERY HOT IN OUR NECK OF THE WOODS THIS WEEKEND, APPROACHING OR SURPASSING 100 DEGREES FARENHEIT.

I plan on takin' in some rays and feel the sweat pour off my brow.

And mingling with the masses.

Cooling off when I need to.

And taking cover when it gets too hot.

Whatever you're doing, wherever you are, have a good one.